exactly my point CS.

One point I belabor with my young preachers is this: Preach the Word, not Chicken Soup for the Soul Sermonettes.

Get you a thought from the Book.

Pick you out some illustrations from the Book.

Choose some homogenizations and homiletically correct harmonizations and homilies from the Book.

The shell the corn and throw the cob at 'em.

If I want current events I'll read the newspaper.

Preach the Word.

We live in the information age, so what used to take hours and weekends spent in a library to "fact check" (and thus was rarely done) is trivial now. All it takes is a Google search for starters and maybe a visit to snopes.com or any online encyclopedia and bible references.

And what makes it so very easy to check a preachers facts should ALSO make it that much easier for the preacher to have his "facts" right to begin with!

And I agree with what was said earlier. Motive means a whole lot. Lets look for the MAJOR factual errors and spend a little less time on the "grammer" (so to speak).

Preach the word is right.Also too make sure Christ is the center of every message.

Of course it's wrong. God doesn't want anyone to check facts. Whether something is true or not really doesn't matter. Just believe what you're told.

My Pastor liked to preach at times Reader Digest Stories.....

But sometimes he would mix a couple of stories to make it fit...

Sometimes he would forget the story and then add some "seasoning" to it...

for those of us who were there awhile it was pretty humorous at times...

But I completely agree as a young minister in a educated age I need to know

what I am preaching and I agree...STAY IN THE WORD!!

If you are afraid of a "fact checker", it is time to hang up your bible and go sit on a pew somewhere. I was told once that I intimidated a man in his own pulpit. I asked why and he say that he was afraid to preach like he wanted to with me there because he knew I would be checking the word for his interpretation.

You bring up another excellent point too. I think that there's an important difference to "taking potshots" and having sincere and well grounded questions.

Paul seems to express frustration over some "questions" that he was being labored with (2 Timothy 2:23 and Titus 3:9).

Dude, that is so wrong on so many levels that you must have been TIC. And that is also wrong because then I have to have a sense of humor about what I read on AFF. :wacko